Sexuality

Last week, the Massachusetts Legislature passed a new transgender identity anti-discrimination bill to little opposition, not even the Catholic legislators who would normally vote with the Church, because they were given a clear message otherwise. More on that in second.

So now a couple hundred guys in dresses and gals in trousers in the commonwealth have been granted special legal status that continues the charade that a man can be a woman and vice versa.

This in a state where 50% of the population is putatively Catholic (although only about 11% of them go to Mass so …).

Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts have released a statement that’s plumbs new depths of milquetoast and unhelpful. There’s not a single word about the truth of human sexuality, nothing about the love we have for those who are deeply afflicted. Nothing about the beauty of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the ultimate meaning of ourselves as men and women. Instead we get incomprehensible gobbledy-gook, a bunch of statements that add up to nothing:

Pope Francis, for example, in his recent encyclical, “Amoris Laetitia”, acknowledges the pluralism within and among cultures regarding sexuality and marriage, but he also warns against an absolute separation of the physical and cultural understanding of sexuality and gender. We too recognize wide disparities about sexuality in American society.

And in recognizing those wide disparities, does the Catholic Church offer any objective truth? Do we have anything to say about the reality and substance of human sexuality? If we do, it’s not in this statement.

The conclusion of the statement is basically an abasement at the altar of political correctness, pledging that true Catholics will be “respectful” and that Catholic institutions will “respect the civil law while upholding the principles of our faith and our religious freedom.” I can’t wait to see what kind of guidance parishes are about to get on that.

Meanwhile, back to the Catholic legislators. I have reliable sources that tell me that certain Beacon Hill legislators who wanted to vote with the Church on this bill called the Archdiocese of Boston’s Pastoral Center for guidance and were told that the Church didn’t have a position on the bill.

That’s right, the Church doesn’t have a position on the enshrinement of transgender rights in law. So the legislators did the politically expedient thing and voted for the bill. Who can blame them?

Washington State has issued new standards to public schools on teaching kids as young as kindergarten about the myriad of genders we have invented:

Beginning in Kindergarten, students will be taught about the many ways to express gender. Gender expression education will include information about the manifestations of traits that are typically associated with one gender. Crossdressing is one form of gender expression. […]

Fourth graders will be expected to “define sexual orientation,” which refers to whether a person identifies as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; they’ll also be taught about HIV prevention. Children in fourth grade will be told that they can choose their sexual orientation.

Whether you are morally opposed to homosexual activity or not, so-called gender identity is not an appropriate topic for five-year-olds. And certainly, the discussion of any sexual activity is not appropriate for 10-year-olds.

It seems like alarmism and hysteria to declare we live under a totalitarian system, but how else to describe a system of indoctrination under governmental authority that declares parents and their professed moral views to be irrelevant to the greater need of society to shape children according to the social re-engineering principles in vogue.

Half of Massachusetts’ Legislature has passed a new Transgender Bathroom Bill that throws out both common sense and biological science in order to accommodate a couple hundred people in the state … at most. The other half of the Legislature is sure to pass it and the governor has pledged to sign it.

Not only does the bill allow people to use whatever bathroom they choose based on their current preference, it also removes the word “sex” from many laws and replaces it with “gender identity.” Of course, they also included a provision to punish anyone who would “improperly claim a gender identity.” How exactly, in the midst of this insanity would you determine that? If we’re letting people re-define their own reality, maybe their reality includes a fluid gender identity. Once you’ve opened Pandora’s box, everything is on the table.

Meanwhile, I find it ironic that people who claim that Christians are anti-science and many of the same people who point to climate change as “settled” science, now reject scientific facts that have been in place for all of time.

Here’s the reality: You are born a man or a woman. I’m sorry if you have different feelings. I wish I could fly. It doesn’t make me a bird.

And speaking of a lack of grip on reality, the sponsors of the bill think the Founding Fathers would be proud of them. No, the Founding Fathers, if they knew what would happen to their new country, would probably have shut down the whole experiment and ask King George to take them back. Sorry, guys, the empire is no better off.

Think about it: we already expect so much of our public schools, and now … this? Is it really so important to force schools to let boys play on girl teams, and vice versa, and so forth? Progress, I guess. …

Whenever liberals accuse conservatives of waging culture war, I think of things like this and wonder what kind of world they live in inside their heads. Was this a pressing need right now? Did the federal government have to nationalize bathroom, locker room, and athletic team policy, to enforce a highly controversial point of view onto a diverse nation that was never consulted?

This tracks with so much else of the liberal SJW agenda. Schools have been tasked with so much more than teaching reading, writing, math, social studies. Now they must “teach ‘life skills,’ nutrition and a school-board approved simulacrum of morality while simultaneously functioning as essentially medium-security prisons for fear of threats both internal and external,” according to an article by Chris Stirewalt, linked by Rod.

The school has become the preferred institution of Big Government to replace the family and the church as the foundations of society. Obviously, it’s because the schools are controlled by the bureaucrats, sometimes directly, but often indirectly through massive federal and state funding that all comes with strings attached. They strip parents of their right and duty to raise and form their children according to their own principles and values and they do so because parents won’t raise their children according to the new SJW ideologies. And churches must be pre-empted as well because the pesky constitution puts them outside the control of those same bureaucrats and because they stand for those values that the SJWs don’t want parents instilling in their kids.

Obama and his allies know that imposing Gay/Straight Alliances and transgender bathroom policies on children in schools is important because they know the way to change American to their warped thinking is through indoctrination of children. You don’t have to believe me. They say it themselves.

Yet another reason we homeschool our children. I wonder how long before that becomes illegal.

When I’m out with my two oldest daughters, 10 and 8, but without Melanie, when it comes time for them to use the bathroom, I let them go into the ladies’ room alone (unless there’s a family/single-use restroom available). What else can I do? They’re too old for me to take into the men’s room and I can’t go into the ladies’ room with them.

Until now, I guess. As the guy in the video shows, Target’s new restroom policy means any man–no matter how he’s dressed or whether he’s surgically mutilated himself–can now use the ladies’ room.

In the past, I thought my girls would be safe in there with other women. But now that any pervert has access, I’m not so sure anymore. So now, ladies, I’ll be exercising my new right to enter your bathroom and stand guard over my daughters’ bathroom stall while they use it. And you’re welcome to come into the men’s room to do the same for your boys.

Of course, we could just avoid patronizing Target, which we might do. But once this policy spreads to every business–as is the Social Justice Warriors’ intent–that won’t be a real option. So get used to men like me in your bathrooms, ladies. You can thank the tiny handful of trans-activists and their SJW allies for that. Sorry.

Trent Horn goes to town on the logic of the so-called “bathroom bill” in North Carolina that requires people to use the bathroom corresponding with their biological sex as determined on their birth certificates. (What a world we have when you have to even parse that out.) He makes sound arguments and outlines how the bill is an entirely rational way of keeping people safe in our society.

But I wonder if there’s a compromise possible in all this. What if the law simply said that you should use the bathroom that corresponds with your current plumbing? Or to put it more bluntly, if you can use a urinal, you use a men’s room. Given that much of the argumentation for the bathroom bill has to do with security of women from men taking advantage of the law to ogle or assault them, then this would solve that, wouldn’t it? I’m not expert in post-operative transgender psychology, but my guess is that people do this because they are not attracted to the opposite sex and so want to switch teams, i.e. a man becomes a woman because he finds men attractive. So having him use a ladies’ room after his operation to remove… should present no problem.

I cannot believe the newspaper wasted a full-page on this. It’s just more of the typical narcissistic navel-gazing of the homosexual culture that thinks that anybody besides themselves care whether they’re gay or not. (In fact, before it backtracked on its scientific responsibility, the American Psychiatric Association used to classift homosexual inclination as a narcissistic disorder.) And today, there’s another article highlighting how all the enlightened politically correct types are running to say how wonderful this public revelation is.

Frankly, there was no point to it. If Steve Buckley felt it necessary to tell his family and friends and co-workers about it, that’s his business. But there’s no reason to put it in the newspaper as if it was news. There was no compelling reason that anyone else had to know, except for the standard “we have to make everyone accept homosexuality by trumpeting how normal it is.” If it was so normal, you wouldn’t have to browbeat and brainwash people into thinking it’s normal.

What a sad and pathetic display. I guess it’s part of the culture today where every sordid detail of one’s life gets played out on Twitter and Facebook. I’d rather we all stopped. Melanie and I may blog and write online about our kids and being parents and some tidbits of our day, but there’s no way we’re going to impose our personal and intimate lives on everyone else. But when you’re a celebrity (or a gay sports writer, in this case), I guess you think everyone’s just dying to know. Trust me, we’re not.

“Why do guys do that?” As a married man with single female friends, it’s a common refrain, often delivered in an exasperated voice following a sad tale of some guy being generally obnoxious. Usually the guy is clueless to his bumbling ways, but it’s always about a guy trying to romance her. Often, he’s being creepy by being too forward, moving too fast, showing up in unexpected places, or assuming too much. I know this because I was that guy once. (I’ve told the embarrassing tale of my first “date” with my wife often enough; I’m moving on.)

So “why do guys do that?”, meaning whatever action is driving the object of his affections away. Well, I’m here to tell you ladies, that we do it because you told us to.

No, not you specifically, but you generally. As in, the fairer sex. Just when did you tell us? In the only places we get exposed to it these days: Romantic comedy and drama movies and TV shows. You know what I’m talking about. There’s Chris O’Donnell, brooding and good-looking, and he’s alienated the leading lady, say, a fetching and endearing Minnie Driver. So he either shows up unannounced at her house with a massive gesture of a gift, say a bouquet of flowers that would choke a horse. Or he sweeps her off her feet to some romantic moment manufactured by him, a candlelit dinner on a rooftop overlooking the sunset over the bay. Or she comes home to a family reunion she was dreading, one in which she anticipates the inevitable “why are you single?” questions, and he’s already there, like one of the family, fitting into her life so perfectly. And later on, in the moonlight, they walk and talk and he stops to kiss her. She resists at first, but then gives in to his advance. Cue the violins.

Admit it, ladies, for just a moment, you swooned. Maybe a little. (Okay, Melanie, I know you didn’t, but let the other ladies admit the moment.)

This is what Hollywood has been shoveling out for decades as the ultimate perfection of romance. And generations of men, dragged to these movies by girlfriends, have seen the women they’re with swoon over the saccharine seductions and become convinced that this must be what women want. And so they try it out with disastrous results. Show up up unannounced and hang out with the intended paramour’s family and you’ll be labeled a stalker. Try to force that kiss on her and you’ll be explaining to the nice police officer that Chris O’Donnell did it and Minnie swooned. The problem is none of us are Chris O’Donnell or Matt Damon or Brad Pitt or all the rest of the romantic leading men. And, ladies, be glad we aren’t.

Now, I’m not excusing the dumb and sometimes downright creepy antics of some of my brothers out there. We should all know better than to think that anything we see on the big or small screen in any way reflects the way people do or ought to behave. But we’ve been conditioned.

So while I’m not saying you ladies should excuse creepy or disrespectful or forward behavior from men who seek your affections, especially when his attention is unwanted, I’m just saying, realize what generations of silver screen romance have wrought in our relationships, false expectations and manufactured moments and all.

N.B. Melanie also reminds me that it doesn’t take much to encourage a guy in the first place. Melanie tells me that when she was in college she would go out to a bar with friends, and some guy would start chatting her up. So being shy and polite, she’d listen and smile, in contrast to all the women who take sport in crushing male egos by not even giving them the time of day or only wanting to talk about themselves. The men would take this as a sign of interest by Melanie and hit on her and ask for her number, when really all she wanted was for the creepy bar guy to leave her alone so she could hang out with her friends and then go home to curl up with a good book.

So that’s another reason guys do “that”. Men are like puppies in that way: Show him some interest, be nice to him, don’t talk just about yourself and it must be a sign that you’re into him. I’m sorry but it’s rough out there in the dating trenches and they’re generally shell-shocked.

Under the policy, school nurses would be able to hand out condoms to students who ask for them. Dr. Beth Singer tells the Provincetown Banner that asking a school nurse for a condom would ensure that younger students get information on how to use them.

Oh goody, an adult telling my pre-pubescent child how to use a condom. By the way, “the schools will not honor a parent’s request to not hand out condoms to their children.” It’s irrelevant that you’re the parent. The Government knows better how to raise your kids because you might not do it right. (“Right” being defined as the most liberal way possible.)

Astonishingly, even this doesn’t go far enough for some.

“I’m just concerned the kids would decide not to have the conference (with the school nurse) and choose not to go for the condom,” said school committee member Carrie Notaro.

At an age when kids should be concerned with whether they have the entire Red Sox starting lineup in baseball cards, the school committee is concerned with whether they’re having safe sex. I have an idea: Stick to educating children!

But what am I talking about? This is Provincetown, the summer homosexual/lesbian capital of the East Coast, where bondage shops line main street next to places selling postcards. All they do is think about sex. The culture is soaked with it and apparently so are the schools. Any decent parent should either be homeschooling, private schooling, or moving away. Sick.

The gatekeepers of liturgical language are so concerned that the average Joe in the pew can’t understand the word “ineffable”, yet we’ve already dumbed down the language into insensibility. Witness today’s second reading, 2 Corinthians 6:18:

Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.

Read at face value, this translation, the New American Bible, seems to say that there are some sins that are immoral and some that are not and that sins committed “outside the body” are not immoral. That makes no sense. But that’s because of the poor translation. The Greek word translated as “immorality” is “porneia”. Look familiar? Look like any English words we know?

This word also appears in several other places in the New Testament. In Matthew 5:32, where Jesus forbids divorce, he says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unchastity (“porneia”), makes her an adulteress.” It has also been variously translated as fornication or to more specifically refer to homosexuality or bestiality or another sexual perversion. So Paul could be translated as saying, “Avoid sexual perversion. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual pervert sins against his own body.” While that may be too blunt for a Mass where children are present, it has the benefit of clarity.

Perhaps we could tone it down a bit to “sexual immorality” or even “unchastity.” Oh, but will Joe Six-Pack in the pew be able to understand a subtle word like “unchastity”?

Instead we offer translations of Scripture that obscure meaning rather than convey it because we’re afraid of shocking people with straight talk about sin. Is it any wonder that collectively we’ve lost a sense of sin? Is it any wonder people have abandoned the sacrament of confession?